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For Intellectual-Principle is not a simplex, nor is the soul
that proceeds from it: on the contrary things include variety in
the degree of their simplicity, that is to say in so far as they
are not compounds but Principles and Activities;- the activity of
the lowest is simple in the sense of being a fading-out, that of
the First as the total of all activity. Intellectual-Principle is
moved in a movement unfailingly true to one course, but its unity
and identity are not those of the partial; they are those of its
universality; and indeed the partial itself is not a unity but
divides to infinity.
We know that Intellectual-Principle has a source and advances to
some term as its ultimate; now, is the intermediate between
source and term to thought of as a line or as some distinct kind
of body uniform and unvaried?
Where at that would be its worth? it had no change, if no
differentiation woke it into life, it would not be a Force; that
condition would in no way differ from mere absence of power and,
even calling it movement, it would still be the movement of a
life not all-varied but indiscriminate; now it is of necessity
that life be all-embracing, covering all the realms, and that
nothing fail of life. Intellectual-Principle, therefore, must
move in every direction upon all, or more precisely must ever
have so moved.
A simplex moving retains its character; either there is no
change, movement has been null, or if there has been advance it
still remains a simplex and at once there is a permanent duality:
if the one member of this duality is identical with the other,
then it is still as it was, there has been no advance; if one
member differs from the other, it has advanced with
differentiation, and, out of a certain identity and difference,
it has produced a third unity. This production, based on Identity
and Difference, must be in its nature identical and different; it
will be not some particular different thing but Collective
Difference, as its Identity is Collective Identity.
Being, thus, at once Collective Identity and Collective
Difference, Intellectual-Principle must reach over all different
things; its very nature then is to modify into a universe. If the
realm of different things existed before it, these different
things must have modified it from the beginning; if they did not,
this Intellectual-Principle produced all, or, rather, was all.
Beings could not exist save by the activity of
Intellectual-Principle; wandering down every way it produces
thing after thing, but wandering always within itself in such
self-bound wandering as authentic Intellect may know; this
wandering permitted to its nature is among real beings which keep
pace with its movement; but it is always itself; this is a
stationary wandering, a wandering within the Meadow of Truth from
which it does not stray.
It holds and covers the universe which it has made the space, so
to speak, of its movement, itself being also that universe which
is space to it. And this Meadow of Truth is varied so that
movement through it may be possible; suppose it not always and
everywhere varied, the failing of diversity is a failure of
movement; failure in movement would mean a failing of the
Intellectual Act; halting, it has ceased to exercise its
Intellectual Act; this ceasing, it ceases to be.
The Intellectual-Principle is the Intellectual Act; its movement
is complete, filling Being complete; And the entire of Being is
the Intellectual Act entire, comprehending all life and the
unfailing succession of things. Because this Principle contains
Identity and Difference its division is ceaselessly bringing the
different things to light. Its entire movement is through life
and among living things. To a traveller over land, all is earth
but earth abounding in difference: so in this journey the life
through which Intellectual-Principle passes is one life but, in
its ceaseless changing, a varied life.
Throughout this endless variation it maintains the one course
because it is not, itself, subject to change but on the contrary
is present as identical and unvarying Being to the rest of
things. For if there be no such principle of unchanging identity
to things, all is dead, activity and actuality exist nowhere.
These "other things" through which it passes are also
Intellectual-Principle itself; otherwise it is not the
all-comprehending principle: if it is to be itself, it must be
all-embracing; failing that, it is not itself. If it is complete
in itself, complete because all-embracing, and there is nothing
which does not find place in this total, then there can be
nothing belonging to it which is not different; only by
difference can there be such co-operation towards a total. If it
knew no otherness but was pure identity its essential Being would
be the less for that failure to fulfil the specific nature which
its completion requires.
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